Thursday, April 12, 2012

The Palstar KH-6 50MHz handheld

I was browsing around the Ham Radio section of e-Bay the other evening when I came across a Palstar KH-6 going for a modest price. I knew a little about them, having heard that some SOTA participants had used them for activations on 50MHz.

The auction was just ending so I popped in a last minute bid to see what would happen. To my surprise, I won!

The rig arrived yesterday. It seems to work ok and I have done the obligatory across the shack test. Transmitted audio sounded good on the FT847. I put the rig on the external collinear and perhaps not surprisingly the receiver overloaded. However, I could hear the GB3RAL beacon on 50.050.

The challenge, as I have found before is how well such a short aerial will do. However, I'm hoping for some local contacts and perhaps some more distant ones from the top of White Horse Hill or similar summits.

5 comments:

I built a version of the g3jvl 50Mhz vertical specifically for summer SOTA / WOTA activations (The orginal design is here - http://www.uksmg.org/content/vertical.htm).

I've not used it in anger yet but it might be worth sondiering as a wire only version is very light. My cobbled together version is here (http://g7kse.co.uk/projects/50mhz-portable-vertical-antenna/) if you fancied taking a look.